Macdonald advances in national bee
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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Andrew Macdonald admitted he was a little nervous when he stepped in front of the microphone during Tuesday's opening round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Longtime pronouncer Jacques Bailey understood how Macdonald felt and tried to reassure him before giving him his word -- "bhikshuni."
"That did not put me at ease," Macdonald, the 14-year-old eighth-grader from Bishop John Mussio Junior High School in Steubenville, told Bailey.
If the jitters still existed, they did not show, as Macdonald calmly spelled his word -- a noun which means a woman belonging to a Hindu or Buddhist monastic order: a Hindu or Buddhist nun -- and then correctly identified misnomer as an incorrect designation or term to survive the first two rounds of the competition at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.
During the third round Tuesday evening, Macdonald correctly spelled "convoluted" to earn a spot in today's quarterfinals.
Macdonald, the son of Paul and Suzanne Macdonald of Steubenville, said he was familiar with his first-round word.
"I had studied it, so I had seen it before," he said Tuesday evening. "The reason that the third-round words seem to be easier is that the first-round words came from the list, and the third-round words came from the dictionary."
That list came from Scripps, and included 4,000 words that made up the pool of possible selections for the first round. Every participant had the opportunity to study those words.
"That list of 4,000 words is so difficult to learn," said Paul Macdonald. "They tell you that you need to know all 4,000 of the spellings and definitions. It is so difficult."
Andrew Macdonald earned his return trip to the national bee in March, when he won the Jefferson-Harrison County Regional Spelling Bee Presented by the Herald-Star for the second-consecutive year. He finished tied for 89th in 2022. As his mother, Suzanne, explained, this year Andrew has made it deeper into the competition than he did last year.
"We're so proud," she and Paul said.
While the competition is the centerpiece of Bee Week, activities held when the participants aren't spelling allow the spellers and their parents to get to know one another. For Andrew, it also presented an opportunity to get reacquainted with some of the other returning spellers.
"I have been seeing people from last year who I got to hang out with, which is nice," he said.
He added that the experience has been enjoyable, and that he liked being able to watch the other spellers compete and learn from them.
Among the activities he has participated in were a couple of workshops including a STEM session and another that offered lessons built around LEGOS.
"A thing I really liked about the workshops was that they allowed them to interact with the other spellers," Suzanne Macdonald explained.
Macdonald was one of 139 spellers of the original 229 competitors to make it out of the first two rounds, and one of 121 spellers advancing to the quarterfinals.
Competition will continue today when the quarterfinals begin at 8 a.m. They can be streamed on Ion Plus and at spellingbee.com. The semifinals are scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. today, with the finals scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursday. The semifinals and finals can be watched on Ion. All rounds of the competition are being streamed at spellingbee.com.